


Hurricane Season

by girlpire



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Consensual Sex, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Language, Orgasm Denial, Painful Sex, Sex, Twinkies, general soullessness, handjob
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:02:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27899539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlpire/pseuds/girlpire
Summary: After sustaining a serious injury, Angelus must rely on the slayer for help while he heals. He just can't let her find out about the whole missing-a-soul thing.It's an uneasy feeling, the way he imagines it would feel to be drowning in the ocean but get saved by a shark. Your only choice is to let it pull you to the surface in its teeth, and all you can do is try not to piss it off on the way up.On the other hand – and the thought almost makes him smile – what's more exhilarating than hitching a ride back from death between the jaws of a goddamn shark?
Relationships: Angel/Buffy Summers, Angelus (BtVS)/Buffy Summers
Comments: 24
Kudos: 86





	Hurricane Season

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired by the awesome people from Joyous Rebellion! The setting is vague enough that it could be during the Angelus arc of season 4 of AtS if you want, but in my head it's post-series, disregarding comics. Either way is fine.

*

This time he doesn't lose it in a girl.

To be honest, he hadn't really believed he could fuck his soul away again anyway, not after knowing how it worked the first time. He's thought about this a lot over the years since it happened: he would be too concerned, too careful – the happiness wouldn't be perfect enough because of the risk, because of the fact that taking the risk at all was itself a kind of failure. Giving in, knowing he wasn't strong enough to resist the temptation, would make him feel too guilty to ease his grip, to let the soul slip away into a warm body. Even if it was hers.

Probably.

He never told anyone he suspected it couldn't happen again the same way. That would've opened up too many dangerous possibilities, and besides it was only a theory. No way to test it but to take the risk. No need to get anyone's hopes up.

Not that it actually matters anymore, since that's not how it happens this time.

It's kind of funny, he thinks, standing amid the bodies slung carelessly around the floor of the tiny dive bar, that souls aren't a little easier to hang onto. Sure, he had his for a century before he lost it the first time, but since then it's been coming and going like hurricane season. If souls are so big and important, surely it should take a little more loosening before they come free. Right?

Take these people for instance. He drags a large body up by the collar and peers into its slack face. The soul came out of this guy so easily. He shakes the body a little, watches its parts sway back and forth, the whole broken human shell dangling like a busted piñata. Empty. Where's its soul now, hmm?

He drops the body in a heap on the floor and passes the back of his hand across his mouth. Well, this was a bust. Not that he didn't enjoy it, but the information he wanted hadn't been forthcoming from the snitch. Maybe he ate him too quickly. And maybe he shouldn't have killed everyone else in the tiny bar just for fun; he can see how this might be an issue later. Just got caught up in the moment. There were only five, including the bartender, but someone is bound to notice.

This is her town. She's going to come snooping around now, and that means he'll have to see her before he wanted to. Shit. He hasn't even decided yet what excuse to give her for being here. It's not like he can tell her the truth.

So he's standing there with his hands on his hips, lips pursed thoughtfully, surveying the damage he's done and wondering how he can spin it to his advantage, when there's a loud thump from the direction of a storage closet. Without giving it a lot of thought, he goes and opens the door. And gets stabbed straight through the gut by a thick yellow tentacle.

He almost throws up. It's not something anyone thinks much about, but a tentacle through the gut really jostles your stomach. Blood heaves up into his mouth and some of it trickles out before he can swallow it back down. Not his blood. Snitch blood. But then some of his blood comes up, too. His hands reach down immediately to grasp the slimy tentacle and pull it out, but the... whatever the fuck... isn't having it. Another fleshy tentacle launches out at him from the closet and stabs him in the chest. This one is about as thick as his wrist. It punches completely through his body like the first one, and then the thing spreads itself wide.

It's trying to tear him apart.

The pain of this bizarre stretch is shocking to him. Not just because it happened so fast and unexpectedly, but because his muscles are being moved in a way he's never felt before. After roughly two and a half centuries, not even counting his long excursion in literal hell, he didn't think there was a kind of pain he hadn't experienced, but here it is. He grabs at the chest tentacle and yanks it up, pushes out his fangs and sinks them in. His teeth meet in the middle and then he's spitting out a wobbly chunk of yellow flesh onto the floor at his feet. Some kind of slime is spewing out. It burns.

He manages to gnaw completely through this tentacle before the thing can emerge fully from the closet, but it gets most of its bulk into the bar, still impaling him through the gut. Somehow his spine isn't shattered. He digs his fingernails into the thick appendage at his stomach, trying to tear through it. His body is fighting on its own, though; his mind is somewhere completely else. He's thinking, what the hell is happening, _how_ the hell is this happening, what the hell even is this thing, why the hell is it killing me, was it hiding in this closet the whole time I was in here killing these fucking humans? He can't get a good grip on the rubbery arm where it sticks out of his body, but another tentacle shoots forward and he seizes it before it can impale him. He turns it around and starts beating the thing viciously with its own arm. The slime is getting everywhere.

He eventually wins. Sort of.

When the thing is dead, it drops him to the floor on top of the snitch. He's still impaled through two different places, one connected to the demon and the other flopping free where he chewed through it. He takes hold of the severed tentacle and pulls it from his chest but can't get up to remove the bigger one. He lies bleeding, skewered, thinks about the fact that a few minutes ago his biggest problem was the possibility of the slayer finding a couple of dead bodies, maybe wanting to shove a soul down his throat later.

When he thinks of her, he thinks suddenly that he can smell her, a wisp of that sweet lotion she likes threading its way through the air, a darker thread of power meandering under it. But he's covered in blood and slime and his head has been knocked around and he knows he heard some ribs go crunch, and of course there's still the whole almost-got-ripped-in-half thing, so even though he thinks he smells her and he still hasn't come up with a plan, he doesn't make any move to escape. He can’t. All he can do is pull his other face back inside and wait.

Within moments, the front door of the bar swings open. Unmistakable footsteps approaching. He doesn't see her from his angle on the floor, but in his head he can imagine what's happening: she's walking forward cautiously, probably clutching a stake or an axe or a crossbow, taking in the violent scene in the bar, the bodies and the demon and the slime-covered floor. And lying there in the middle of it all, broken and bleeding around a tentacle the width of a man's thigh, is—

“Angel?” She hurries toward him, caution thrown aside, and almost slides down in the slime. Takes a knee beside him.

He starts to say something, aims for a nonchalant “Hey,” but what comes out is a wet cough and a trickle of blood.

“Oh my God,” she says, looking down at his stomach. Her eyes follow the tentacle to its source and then she quickly moves around him, brandishing an axe. “Okay, just hang on,” she says.

He hears the axe come down, feels the impact resonate through the tentacle in his gut. But he's not sure if the first swing severs it completely. Maybe she has to chop it a few times to free him.

He's not awake to find out.

*

When he does wake up, he’s outside. Being dragged. She’s dragging him. Great.

She’s got her arms wrapped around him under his arms, his back to her, and he’s bleeding all over the fuck from these gaping, seriously _gaping_ wounds, his shoes scraping along the ground through the trail of red he’s leaving behind. He knows she’s strong enough to lift his weight, but their relative sizes make his body unwieldy, and hauling him over her shoulder is impossible because her shoulder would just push right through the massive hole in his stomach.

So: dragged by the slayer. God, nobody had better see this.

He attempts to stand, pushing weakly at the ground with his feet. Excruciating pain shudders through his entire body.

“Don’t try to move,” she says, dragging him along.

I’ll kill you, he thinks. I’ll kill you so hard. Blood vengeance! I—

“You’ll be okay,” she says. “I’ve got you.”

He slumps again into unconsciousness.

*

The next time he wakes up, he’s lying on a bed, but the bed is covered with a vinyl shower curtain and a whole bunch of wet towels. Why are they—? Oh. It’s blood. It’s his blood still coming out. There are tight bandages constricting his stomach and his chest, but the red is seeping through, soaking into this weirdly warm nest underneath him. The wounds are big actual holes through his body; there’s no way to keep the blood inside until his flesh starts to knit itself back together. Which is going to take an inconveniently long amount of time, but will happen faster if he drinks someone.

He can hardly move. Nothing is working right, not even his arms. Everything is just this massive throb of agony. Why the hell was that demon in the closet? His skin is raw where its slime burned him, but he's being cleaned. A cool, wet sponge sliding down his neck. Over and over. Across his shoulder, along the edge of the bandage around his chest, down the bump of his bicep. It hurts, because everything hurts, but this pain is just a stinging burn of irritation, like touching a rash. It actually hurts less than anything else, and that makes it almost feel good.

“Buffy?” he whispers. It makes him cough. More specks of blood come up.

“Shhh, I'm here.”

His instinct is to pull away. She's technically his mortal enemy, after all. On a good day, with some planning first, _maybe_ he could take her. Or at least defend himself long enough to escape with his life. On a bad day, she'd run him through with a sword and send him to hell for a hundred years. But on a twice-impaled plus concussion and broken ribs day, he couldn't even lever himself out of this bed if his existence depended on it, so he doesn't try. He lies there and lets her clean him, the bits of his skin that aren't wrapped up tight, and it's an uneasy feeling, the way he imagines it would feel to be drowning in the ocean but get saved by a shark. Your only choice is to let it pull you to the surface in its teeth, and all you can do is try not to piss it off on the way up.

On the other hand – and the thought almost makes him smile – what's more exhilarating than hitching a ride back from death between the jaws of a goddamn shark?

She doesn't know yet. It's a little funny, and he appreciates that about his situation. He came here wanting to kill her and accidentally got a sponge bath instead. It's a good thing he can't laugh right now or it would probably clue her in that something fundamental has changed since the last time they saw each other.

So, what would he do if he had a soul?

With some effort, he manages to reach for her hand. He finds it near his shoulder, holding the sponge. He rests his hand on top of hers, squeezes just a little. Cool water rolls down over his stinging arm. Her hands are so small, considering everything they've done. She puts her other hand on top of his and squeezes back.

“Try to get some rest,” she says softly.

She most likely won't kill him before he wakes up, so he lets himself black out again.

*

He wakes up to big pain shooting through his chest. “Ahh!” he cries out, then grits his teeth so he won't cry out again, because he knows what this is – it's just his body trying to close, the severed nerves seeking their other halves inside the red tangle of his wound. Firing at each other across the gap. This is good; it's the first step. But somehow it hurts more than it did before. His stomach hasn't even begun doing this part yet.

“Here, this should help,” she says, and there are pills, and there is blood in his mouth. Pig's blood, which he hasn't had in a while and startles him, the gamey taste of it after becoming used to drinking humans again. She's sitting in the bed with him. His head is in her lap and he doesn't even realize until she's feeding him, helping him drink the animal blood from a mug. It's not a good angle and some slips down the side of his cheek. He coughs, and she says, “Sorry, sorry,” and wipes the drip from his skin with the corner of a towel.

The bandage around his chest is so tight that he can hardly breathe in enough air to ask, “How long?”

“Two nights since I found you. Do you remember what happened?”

Yes, but his version is probably very different from hers. “Demons,” he whispers. Which is technically true. Two demons, including himself.

“They killed five people,” she tells him grimly. “The one that did this to you is dead, but whatever killed the others got away.”

Was dragged away, he thinks. By a shark. But what he says is, “You’ll find it.” Also technically true. He can feel the pig's blood draining slowly out of his stomach through his back. It’s a sick feeling, this spreading wetness beneath him. That metallic blood-smell hangs heavily around the bed; it smells like someone is dying. Outside he can hear rain, soft drops pattering down onto leaves and stone. He can also hear her pulse, the steady wave of it through her thigh beneath his head. Her blood and the rain sound like they could be two parts of the same song. He’s not entirely sure where he is but it’s too much work to open his eyes and look.

Her hand, warm fingers brushing lightly against his hair, against the side of his face, his neck. “I haven’t… do you want me to call someone? I wasn’t sure if…”

“No,” he breathes. “Not yet.”

“Okay.”

They stay like this, quiet. The pain lessens a little, but not very much. He can imagine the pills falling whole out of his body, although he knows they didn’t. Her fingers lie on his neck just over the place where his pulse would be, and it’s thrilling, a little, to picture what her hands would do to him if she knew. When she finds out. There’s not a world where she doesn’t find out eventually. But for now, she lets him rest his evil head in her lap, and she touches him carefully to avoid causing more pain. This one spot on his neck that she’s touching, this is the only place that doesn’t hurt. Except it does hurt.

There’s no way in hell he could fight her right now. He couldn’t fight a persistent cotton ball right now. But he thinks about it anyway, thinks about flipping suddenly, biting right into her femoral artery through her jeans. A dangerous move, leaves her hands free. But maybe that would be alright. Maybe she would go on stroking his neck and his hair like this. Letting her knuckles slowly graze the outline of his ear while he drank from her.

He’s still having trouble staying conscious. For a moment, he thinks he’s really done it, really flipped over and bitten her. It's the smell of the blood. But he hasn’t moved.

Very slowly, he reaches up and back. His arm feels like he’s wearing someone else’s arm and their skin is too tight around him. He touches her thigh. Warm. Her other hand covers his.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he murmurs. What he doesn’t say is maybe this will make it easier to kill her. Later, when he’s feeling up to it. The fact that she’s not afraid to comfort him like this, to be this close to his teeth.

“I’m glad _you’re_ here,” she says back. “One more round with that demon and you wouldn’t be.”

“One more second with it.” He still hasn’t opened his eyes.

Those fingers. Feather-light against his hair. Quietly, “You wanna tell me why you came?”

No. “Later,” he says.

*

She's not there when he wakes up again. He lies still, listens to the wind outside blowing the trees around, wonders how long it's been now. If he could move, he would leave. Let the wind blow him away somewhere to heal on his own, lick his own wounds. Come back and try again some other time. It's all wrong like this, and his first thought on waking shouldn't have been why isn't she here with me, but he doesn't actually hate the wrongness of it, finds it sort of amusing in that way that only the very old can appreciate, taking every surprise as a good thing because surprises are harder and harder to come by. Even a bad surprise makes life interesting, and hey, at least now he knows he's harder to tear apart than he looks.

But he’d still leave if he could. His sense of self-preservation was never tied to the soul.

He hasn't been chained up, which means she must not realize yet. Which means she'll come back. And maybe when she comes back, she'll pet him some more. He didn't completely hate that either.

He's only alone like this for a few minutes before she returns. As soon as she walks in, he tries to sit up. Habit; it's not like he's _intending_ to hurt himself. But the movement – barely a movement at all – makes him cry out, and she's running toward him, reaches the bed before he even falls back on it again, his face contorted in agony. “No no, don't move!” she says urgently, and he's thinking not helpful, not helpful, not helpful...

Then her hand on his face, cupping his cheek. He leans into it, wincing, breathes raggedly through the pain. Swallows. He says, “You came back.”

“Of course I came back.” The pad of her thumb skims along his eyebrow, like she could rub the hurt off his face. “Please, you think I can afford to run away every time one of my exes gets swiss cheesed by evil Squidward?”

He huffs, but the huff makes him cringe, and it takes another few seconds before he can finally open his eyes. She's sitting on the bed beside him, looking down at his face. Her hair hangs loose around her shoulders, a little damp from the weather. Her eyes are tired. She looks older than he remembers. Every time he sees her, she looks older. He's always got to remind himself that she's not frozen in time like he is, like his memory of her is. This is the first chance he's gotten to look at her properly since she found him.

He manages a weak smile, says, “Hi.” And he doesn't bleed at her from his mouth, so he's pleased with the effect.

Her thumb goes softly over his eyebrow again. “Hi.”

They just look at each other like this for a moment, which would maybe be sweet under other circumstances, and he has this thought about sharks again, about taming one. Wonders if it's even possible to do that, if it's possible to do it from inside the shark's mouth. Feel its teeth on your skin but still be the one in control.

She tears her gaze away suddenly and looks down at him, at the towels packed around his body. She says, “You're bleeding less now,” and busies her hands with the towels, pulling them away from him so she can exchange them for fresh ones.

He says, “I'd be bleeding more if I had any blood left.” He tries to shift a little so she can pull the saturated cloths from under his body, but it hurts too much, and she puts a hand on his arm to still him.

“You need to eat.” She says it half to herself, like she's just thinking aloud, but he gives her a little nod. “I gave you what we had, but we don't stock much in the safehouses. We used to, but the expiration dates on blood are just... I don't suppose I could interest you in a snack cake of some kind? Possibly the Twinkie variety?”

“Regular or chocolate?”

“Regular. We couldn't keep the chocolate ones stocked either. Not because they expired, but because they're, you know. Chocolate.”

He gives her an appropriately apologetic look, and she sighs, stands, takes the pile of red towels out of view of the bed. When she comes back, she adjusts the sheet that's covering him to his hips, and he realizes for the first time that, except for the bandages, he's lying here naked. He's not surprised; it's just that with all the towels to soak up his blood, he hadn't noticed before. She tells him, “There's a butcher shop nearby. I'll do a blood and coffee run. Don't go anywhere, okay?”

He says, “I'll cancel my dance plans,” and she gives him a wry smile before she leaves again.

Any human who had been injured the way he's been injured would have died within moments, even a slayer, so he's lucky that he's not lying here dust and he knows that. But the helpless thing isn't really his jam, and it's worse that he's not even pretending. This, right now, completely powerless in the hands of his only natural enemy, is the most precarious position he's ever been in. And sure, it's exciting in a sort of twisted way, but once the novelty wears off, he can't even get out of bed to pace off any restless energy. He can't even get up to look for a goddamn Twinkie.

A few minutes later, the front door opens. He hears the wind blowing suddenly louder across the doorway and then quiet again. But the footsteps that come in aren't hers. The smell isn't her.

Oh good, a local vampire. While he's lying here naked and weak. This just keeps getting better.

He doesn't try to sit up; he's still feeling it from when he tried that earlier. But he puts on a bored glare and turns his head in the vampire's direction as it approaches. He looks it up and down from the bed and says, like he doesn't really care, “Who are you supposed to be?”

“I'm your death,” the vampire growls at him.

He rolls his eyes. “You're really not.” Except maybe it is; it actually could be, and that is really, _really_ annoying. “Clearly the slayer's my death. See?” He glances down at his battered, bloody body. “Already dying here.”

The vampire hesitates. It says, “She's not here. I saw her leave.”

“She didn't go far. You shouldn't have come inside. Nowhere to run, your ass is already toast. Which is a real shame, considering what a smart guy you are. You know, breaking into a slayer's safehouse and all.”

“I didn’t come here for her. I came for you.”

“Cool. Think maybe she'll thank you for killing me before she shoves the stake in?”

“This is all your fault!” the vampire hisses at him, coming forward quickly. It's holding a broken stick from a tree outside. The stick still has a leaf on it, wet with rain. “She's hunting down all of us because of what you did!”

Hmm. “You don't know what you're talking about.”

“Don't try to deny it. You're the one who killed those humans downtown. You think I couldn't smell the blood trail you left all the way here? You had yourself a little party and now the slayer's taking it out on every vampire she sees!”

“Gosh, you mean to tell me a vampire slayer is going around slaying vampires? I'll believe _that_ when I see it. In like five minutes.”

The vampire glances around uneasily. “I'm going to tell her,” it says. “I'm going to tell her it was you and then she'll let me go.”

“Good plan. And she'll probably believe you, because vampires? Notoriously trustworthy. Must be our honest faces.”

The vampire angrily thrusts its stick at his chest, one broken end coming to an abrupt stop over his heart. “Or I could just kill you now,” it says, pressing the point against the tight bandage less than three inches from his tentacle wound.

He doesn't move, doesn't even flinch. “It'll be the last thing you do,” he says, and he’s being serious. But then he hears the front door swing open, and he adds smugly, “Whoops, out of time.” Still looking directly into the vampire's eyes, he shades his voice with concern and calls out, “Buffy, run!”

The vampire, startled, turns away from the bed just in time to get kicked in the face. The damp stick falls from its hand as its body flies across the room and hits the wall. She snatches the stick from the floor and walks over to the crumpled body, frowning as it scrambles to get up. “You really thought you were doing something here,” she observes.

“But he—” The vampire gestures emphatically at the bed. But the stick is already sticking out of its chest, the leaf trembling for one frozen second before the whole thing dissolves into dust.

She coughs quietly and passes a hand through the dust, waving it away from her face with a grimace.

“I will never get tired of watching you do that,” he says.

“You thought I should run from that guy?” She raises a skeptical eyebrow at him and goes to retrieve her coffee and the blood from where she’d dropped them near the door. Amazingly, the coffee didn’t even spill.

“Don’t listen to me. I think I might be delirious.”

He may not have a beating heart, but adrenaline is still coursing through his body. Watching one of his own kind ended so easily right in front of him by the thing that holds him captive is thrilling and terrifying and sick and it makes him want to laugh. Aside from being smarter and prettier, he’s no different from the vampire she just killed with its own dumb stick. Except it could have fought back and he can’t.

She comes over to sit on the bed beside him, and he doesn’t flinch away from her either. There’s no reason to fear her, he reminds himself, because she still doesn’t know. She won't kill him, not right now. She’s even brought him blood and clean bandages. “We should change these,” she says, indicating the dark red bindings on his chest and stomach. “It's probably going to hurt.”

At his silent nod, she takes a small pair of scissors from the table by the bed and starts carefully snipping through the bloody gauze wrapped around his chest. He hasn't been actively bleeding for a while so the blood here is mostly dried to a dark rust, the gauze hardened to itself. But it's also dried to his skin at the edges of the wound, not just with blood but also traces of demon slime, and when she tries to tug it free, the raw nerves fire frantically, and his chest feels to him like it's tearing open, like this hole is being ripped into him for the first time. Like the slayer is killing him and he's just letting it happen.

His other face surges forward with an aggressive snarl and her wrist is suddenly squeezed tight in his fist, would have snapped if she'd been anyone else. She freezes, cool eyes locked on his golden ones while he breathes brokenly through the pain and tries to remember why he isn't eating her. They stare at each other.

“Angel,” she says softly. “It's okay. You're okay.” Doesn't pull away from his violent grip, just waits for him to calm.

Only a few seconds, and then he's peeling his fingers off her arm. Closes his eyes so he doesn't have to look at her judging him. It's the adrenaline; it's these thoughts he's been having, this fragile balance, forcing himself to trust her when he knows he never can. Not like this. The shaky deep breathing makes his ribs ache. He slowly draws his sharp teeth back inside before opening his eyes again, tries to look contrite. “Sorry,” he murmurs. “Maybe we should, um. Soak it off?” Which is to say, you might kill me one day but I will absolutely eat your face if you do that again.

“I'm sorry, I should have thought... Let me get—” She disappears for a minute and comes back with warm water and a sponge, begins the process of soaking the areas around the two major wounds. He lies back and listens to the rain starting to come down again in the night, the way it taps against window glass like fingernails behind the heavy curtains. Lets her work, watches her face concentrating on his body. When her attention is on the lower injury, the bedsheet slides down his hips, a few dark hairs beginning to peek out above the thin material, and she adjusts it higher. But she hesitates first, looking at him. Just for a second. He thinks he's getting better at suppressing the impulse to laugh.

While the bandages soak, she heats the blood for him, and she scoots into the bed behind him like before, carefully lifting his head into her lap so she can help him take more painkillers and drink. Pig's blood again. He wants to point out that slayer blood would heal him a lot more quickly, but this whole thing still makes him uneasy and he's got to play it safe, can't even mention it to be funny. Humans are too sensitive. (That's what makes it funny.)

As she feeds him, she wonders aloud who that vampire was, wonders if it could have been connected to the killing at that dive bar a few nights ago. Because there was definitely a vampire involved; at least two of the five victims had bite marks. The others looked like maybe they'd just been killed for fun, which only makes her more determined to find out who did this, and does he know anything, remember anything from the other night that might be helpful? She's been meaning to ask.

And he tells her he mostly remembers being impaled and knocked against walls and tables and accidentally swallowing evil burning slime, which is all true, and can we maybe talk about this later because everything about it is still painful. I mean, God, it was so horrible wasn't it? The bodies, the way they'd been torn into, did you look at them Buffy? Wasn't it just... so awful? I don't even want to think about it. All that blood and death. All that fear.

The smell of it.

The animal blood doesn't immediately drain out through his back like it did before. The tear in his stomach lining is maybe mostly closed now, which means the blood will just seep out when it starts traveling through his veins. It will all still end up on the outside, but this time it will take longer to get there.

She shifts around on the bed, lays his head back on the pillow when she climbs out from under him. Starts working again on the bandages, which peel off his skin in a less painful way now, slowly. It still hurts, but at least now he's warm and full, and once the dirty gauze is gone, she starts to wash his bruised skin gently, sponges away the remnants of the slime and dried blood that had been trapped underneath the dressings.

“Still, I wonder why the social call,” she says. “Did it say any—”

“It smelled the blood. They'll be able to smell it for a long distance in every direction. Like a beacon.”

“Yeah,” she huffs. “Nothing quite as disturbing and intrusive as undead supernoses.” Goes on sponging his skin, soft little dabs, like she's painting. “But the others haven't been coming inside for tea and conversation.”

“The others?”

“Vampires. They've been circling the place like sharks.” She brightens a little. “I guess that makes you my chum, chum. Because we're... chummy and I can see how that doesn't sound great when you can't really fight or even wear clothes right now, but don't worry. It's all under control. The last few nights have been extra dusty.”

“You're using me as bait?” Again, almost a laugh. It's not a bad strategy as far as vampire hunting goes, but it's colder than he expected from her. His feelings aren't hurt exactly, but it's a blow to the pride.

“Technically. But it's more friendly if we keep saying the word chum.” She glances up at his eyes briefly but then back to her hands where she's cleaning him. “You know, because shark bait but also pal?”

“I know what chum means.” He doesn't intend to sound annoyed, so he adds quietly. “Your puns are still on point.”

“It's just while you're healing. I can be here with you, and the bad guys come to me. Minimal patrol, maximal slay. You're safe, though. I won't let another one get inside.”

If she'd taken him to her home instead of someplace where no one actually lives, that wouldn't be an issue, but he doesn't bother pointing this out. She's playing a more dangerous game than she realizes: she wants to kill these vampires, and the vampires want to kill him, but they also want to kill her, and he wants to kill her himself, and she'd kill him if she knew, and she'll know as soon as she allows one to speak before she kills it. He's not really sure how to react, how she would expect him to react if he still had a soul, whether he's supposed to be angry or hurt or impressed with this plan. But there's nothing he can do about it at this point anyway, which the souled version of himself would also know, so he just sighs, and it hurts his chest, and he says, “Be careful, Buffy.”

“That's me,” she says. “I'm Careful Buffy.”

And he's watching the delicate way she touches him, this way that's gentle around his wounds but unflinching, trying not to hurt him but also not scared of hurting him, even after he snarled at her. That's not as careful as she ought to be. He can't imagine another person like her in the world, this calm and comfortable in the face of a monster, surrounded by potential death. But then again, he's the one lying here at her mercy, and he's not flinching either.

Well, he is, but not because he's scared of her. It just really fucking hurts.

Once his chest is clean, she gathers the used bandages, takes the rest of the towels, wipes the bloodstains from the shower curtain he's lying on. The vinyl makes a crinkling sound as she moves his damaged body around gently and he lets her, but nearly bites through his tongue to keep from screaming at every small motion. She's putting off cleaning around the lower wound and it's a little funny, would be funnier if he weren't going to vomit from the pain.

“Wait, wait,” he murmurs eventually. She's picked up the fresh bandages like she's going to wrap him up again and he can't stand it, the thought of sitting up for that so soon, at least not while he's conscious. “Can we just... hold off on that for a sec?” It actually still hurts just to breathe, to inhale enough to talk at all. He's avoiding looking at the gaping holes in his body. Not squeamish, obviously, but it's a little different when it's your own lung you can see inflating beneath torn muscles.

She doesn't seem as disturbed by it as he would have expected. Her fingertips touch him softly, his healthy skin around the outline of the bruises surrounding the wound. Quietly, she asks, “Does it hurt?”

“Yeah.”

“I can't even imagine.”

“Your touch is nice though. That doesn't hurt.” He tries to give her sincere eyes, but she's not looking at his face. She's looking at his body, at the lines of muscle beneath the unmarked skin, at her fingertips tracing a smooth path down. As if she doesn't see the injuries at all. There's a distant rumble of thunder, brief, and her hand leaves his body, but then it comes back with the sponge again and the warm water, and she's softly cleaning around the bigger wound on his stomach, the one she has to pull the sheet down a little to clean properly.

He hasn't been touched like this, in a tender way, since... shit, it's been longer than he wants to admit, even to himself. Since long before he lost the soul again, anyway. The most intimate touch he's had lately was the tentacle demon, and that wasn't even pleasant. Other than that... a dying human wriggling against him doesn't really count, does it?

He's also just fed – pig's blood, sure, but it's blood – and the blood is still working through his insides, hasn't bled back out yet. So while she touches him, these little wet strokes of the sponge, warm against his coolness, almost like a big tongue licking, and her other hand rests on his hip, fingers half on the sheet and half on his bare skin, he feels himself start to harden beneath the cover. Not some full-on rager but enough to move the sheet a little, definitely enough for her to notice. He has the control to keep this from happening, but he doesn't bother, finds it to be an amusing development, and there's only so much uninterrupted pain you can take before you start to get kind of bored. So here's a distraction.

They don't say anything. He stays perfectly still, listens to the rain tap against the windows, the far-away thunder. Watches her. It's like a nature documentary: with no outside interference, what will the apex predator do next?

She goes on cleaning around the wound, gently wiping the specks of blood from his skin. Only hesitates a moment before tugging the sheet down further, continues this sensible sponge bath like a professional would, like nothing has perked up with sly interest. Even when the sheet loses its precarious balance and slips completely off his cock, which is continuing to fill out, she ignores it. Doesn't cover it again, just keeps rubbing softly at his skin with the warm wet sponge, trying not to disturb the ragged edges of the wound too much. Is her heart beating faster than before? He thinks it is but the rain is getting louder, really starting to pound down. The sound of it drowns the faint rhythm.

Inevitably, his erection gets in her way.

Neither of them has acknowledged it at all, but then her wrist grazes it as she works, and a moment later the side of the sponge catches it, a quick, light stroke, warm. He's just watching her, not laughing, not even sure this is funny anymore. He can't fuck her, not with these injuries; there's no way. But God, it would be sweet if he could. Remembering the first time, the way she opened up around him so willingly, ready to give him anything he wanted. It suddenly occurs to him that all he wants in the world is to be back there again, caught inside that feeling, the way it seemed so right, the natural outcome of their energy together. She's older now; the innocence is gone, but it would be just the same. They still match, no matter what they are to each other now. This is suddenly the reason he came to her town in the first place, the only reason. It seems so obvious. Ask me again, Buff. Right now, so you'll know I'm not lying. Ask me why I'm here.

She finally takes it in her hand. He’s been waiting for this, willing her to do it, not even breathing. But she just moves it out of the way, holds it to one side as she goes on swiping at the skin below his stomach wound, right at this low bit of his belly where the hair just begins. Her fingers curl very lightly around him, only enough to hold it steady away from the sponge, barely a touch at all. But he can feel the warmth of her, can see that she’s looking at his cock in her hand and not at the strip of skin above his pubes where the sponge keeps rubbing over and over even though he’s already clean there.

Gradually the sponge slows. It stops against his body. Everything stops, everything except the agonizing pain and the rain beating the roof and the way she’s looking at her hand around him. Time stops.

Then her fingers tighten. She still hasn’t looked up at his face but he’s hypnotized by how she looks at his cock, not smiling but not frowning either, a tiny wrinkle between her eyebrows as she considers this stiff flesh in her small hand, like there’s something about it that confuses her a bit, though he knows she’s held others this way. Even his. Is it occurring to her, the way it just occurred to him, that this is what they're here for? Go on, he thinks. He thinks it as strongly as he can. Go _on_. We both know you want to.

A squeeze – almost affectionate – and then she adjusts her grip more firmly, and she starts stroking his cock, slow.

She's sitting beside him on the bed, beside his hips, sitting on top of the sheet right at the place where his body goes under it, watching her own hand on him like it's just doing this on its own without consulting her first. Didn't even look up for the encouragement he would have given. Just these steady, even strokes. No hesitation, not anymore, no shyness or buildup. This is simply what's happening now. His foreskin moving up and down with the motion, pale pink cockhead hidden and then exposed, emerging eagerly over and over. That feeling, the tickle of it, shivers through him but he still doesn't say anything, bites his bottom lip to resist the urge to whisper something nasty to her. Doesn't want to break this silent trance she's in as she looks down.

But holy _fuck_ , it feels good, her hot little hand working him. The squeeze, the pull, the raw tingle. A tighter fist than other humans would find comfortable, more like another vampire, or like what he does to himself. He gets this brief image in his head of her human boyfriends being startled, loving it but sore the next day, maybe even bruised. The idea turns him on, the slayer going too hard on human men. Breaking them when she tries to make love. Needs someone like him, really. A demon. To help her make something else.

Except... except this actually does also hurt.

It's his stomach. The torn abdominal muscles trying to clench while she jerks him. It's fucking agony. A torture he's never experienced before but will definitely visit on someone else as soon as the opportunity arises – destroy their abs and follow it with the most exquisite inescapable handjob. Her thumb rolls over the sensitive tip of his cockhead on an upstroke and he wants to die immediately, the pleasure of it warring with hot slices of pain. The best he can do is concentrate on lying still, be the deadest of dead weights, unmoving. Just take it. Focus on the pleasure.

It gets better. The more he concentrates on not letting any of his muscles move or twitch at all, the more he dissolves into the feeling. Like sinking down into something thick and deep. Letting himself be dragged slowly through the stillness at the bottom of the ocean. Heavy all over, but for one shivering spot of excruciating light. Like not having any other body parts at all, just this single point of disembodied bliss, and the burn of some distant ache.

Hell of a lot better than dying, he thinks. And then he thinks, hell of a lot better than killing her.

He could float here, suspended in this moment, for hours. The sound of the rain and the smell of the blood and the quick beat of her heart, that pulse he can feel through the warmth of her skin on his skin. But her tight fist eventually starts to speed up, and it's more and more difficult to lie still. Just take it, he keeps telling himself. Just take it, don't move, don't... A shift of her fingers and suddenly the pad of her thumb is rubbing over the slit in his cockhead, up and down rubbing it with every squeezing stroke. God, it's too much, way too much to feel without being able to move. He tries so hard to keep his body still, but fucking _hell_ that touch, her thumb slippery with a drop of precum, sliding slick over the puffy little opening, over and over. Just take it, just...

But he can't. He can't stop his body from its natural response. Without meaning to at all, he feels himself try to thrust toward her, to chase that urgency she's building inside him. And when he does – this simple flex of his hips, this involuntary clench of his abs to tilt himself forward – his stomach erupts into pain again, and for a moment he can't tell which sensation is more intense, the thing he wants or the thing that hurts. The confusion of feelings is incredible. He can't tell if he hates or loves it but he definitely _respects_ it, and either way it makes him cry out sharply. And the sudden cry hurts his chest, and he automatically tries to curl in on himself, and that makes everything between his neck and his balls silently screech in agony, which makes him cry out again. It happens shockingly fast, this plummet from extreme pleasure to extreme pain.

She snatches her hand away the instant it happens, face startled, as if she's waking suddenly from a dream she didn't even realize she was having. “Sorry,” she blurts out. “Sorry, I didn't mean to—”

“It's okay,” he gasps. He's still caught halfway inside the moment, marveling that it's possible to feel so _much_ all at once. Of course it would be her that could do this to him. “Don't stop.”

But she's already standing up, backing away from the bed. The bowl of water she'd been using to clean him tips and falls to the floor with a clatter. “No, it's not okay. I should go.”

“No, wait,” he breathes, “wait. Don't leave—” Foolishly, he tries to sit up and reach for her, but the pain seizes him again.

Her face is a priceless picture, watching him defeated by such insignificant movements. Her eyes wide, distraught, even horrified. But she seems almost fascinated by it, too. “I have to go,” she repeats, and before he can say anything else, she does go. Sound of the rain suddenly louder, that wet soil smell reaching in, then a slammed door, then nothing. She's gone.

He closes his eyes, waits for the pain throughout his body to quieten to the subtle throb he's become accustomed to. Hurting but not entirely unbearable. His wounds are still unwrapped, but that doesn't really concern him, just means the blood will pool underneath him rather than being soaked up by bandages. No, the primary concern here is this bitch just brought him to the torturous brink of a very promising orgasm and then ran out into the goddamn rain. Fucking cocktease!

He does laugh then, softly to himself, just for a moment. Picturing her face right before she took off.

He's still hard. It would be such an easy thing to take himself in hand and finish what she started (God, what would coming like this even _feel_ like? He's desperately curious) but there's no way for him to clean up afterward, and he refuses to be covered in spunk when she comes back. If she comes back. She's coming back, isn't she?

She doesn't come back.

There's nothing to do but wait, so he waits, impatient. Imagines several different ways to kill or torture her. This keeps him hard for a while, but his erection finally flags, blood draining back into his other parts, then from his other parts and out slowly through the two ugly wounds. The severed nerves in his stomach are starting to do the thing they do, sparking randomly with no warning, trying to reconnect. It hurts. Does he really want to kill her? He had thought so, but now the desire to fuck her again is so strong he thinks maybe killing would be the less satisfying option. Doesn't rule out torture, though. Torture would be pretty damn satisfying.

The rain lets up after a while. When it stops, the night's stillness is too quiet, reminds him of those months spent suffocating underwater, thrashing silently against steel. He's never done well in captivity, soul or no. And he's never been captive like _this_. In his many years, he's been trapped by all manner of restraints, ropes, chains, manacles, steel bars and cages, various boxes including a coffin, buried underground, buried under water, buried under hay once which is less comfortable than you'd think, and even held hostage by a barrier of fire or of sunlight itself. All of those instances were a matter of working the problem, puzzling out an escape, waiting for the right moment, or even relying on someone to come to his rescue. But _this_ , lying unrestrained in a bed, free to go at any moment but _unable_ , restricted by his own traitorous body, left wanting by presumably the only person who even knows he's here, and powerless to go after her?

God, he wants to kill something.

Or like, maim something maybe. Maiming would be good.

He's finally decided the best solution for everyone is to turn her into a vampire and keep her forever (which will open up all kinds of possibilities in the torture department, if he still feels like it after) when the sun finally comes up, and he falls into an unsatisfied but healing sleep.

*

He's slightly less grumpy when he wakes. The crackle of thunder is close by, the silent hum of electricity hanging in the atmosphere even indoors. It makes him twitchy, makes him want to move around, pace until sunset and then pounce on the first human he sees. Drain one quickly to take the edge off. Then maybe stalk another to its home, coerce an invitation, and spend the rest of the windy night playing with a whole family. Just lying here surrounded by such charged air feels unnatural. The expectation of something violent. Like waiting to be attacked.

The sun hasn't gone down yet, but it's on its way when the door quietly opens. Sound of the wind blowing steadily through trees. He can smell her, that dark, earthy smell of power, tempered by the softness of humanity and the scents of her lotion and shampoo. He straightens the sheet to make sure he's covered as she walks in. Her hair is pulled back into a ponytail when she approaches him, and he can't help looking at her bare neck. Imagines the slip of her life through his teeth, the way she would drink eternity from his chest like a reflex if he only had the strength to hold her still enough to bite.

“I brought you some blood,” she says. Quiet. She's holding it in her hand, a glass bottle straight from the butcher. Pig's blood.

“Thanks,” he says softly, and she goes to warm it up, and when she comes back she's got more painkillers, too. Shifts onto the bed carefully, pillows his head on her lap, doesn't say anything at all about giving him blue balls last night.

It feels intimate, being fed like this, even though they aren't looking into each other's eyes. The wave of her pulse under his head, the quiet rush of it. I'll make you mine, he's thinking. We'll get there. He's more healed than he was before. Nowhere close to fighting, not even close to standing up, but the holes are getting smaller, new skin growing pink over muscles pulling themselves back into place. He may actually scar from this, at least for a while. That will be different.

“There's a hurricane warning,” she says as she feeds him, his jaw cupped gently in her warm fingers. “It's headed straight for the city. I figure the rain will wash away the blood outside. No more vampire chum.”

He finishes swallowing, lets her pat his mouth with a cloth. He could have fed himself; his arms are okay by now. It's just the sitting up that's the problem. But he's enjoying the closeness, her hands taking care of him, her warm body supporting his head. He'll take it for as long as he can, and he won't gloat about having the slayer as his nursemaid. At least not in front of her. “Does that mean you'll stay here tonight?”

“I stay here every night.” She probably feels the questioning tilt of his head, because she quickly adds, “Patrolling. Outside.” Her fingers are petting him softly, these tiny, light touches against his hair and neck and cheek. He could bite through those fingers in one swift movement. She says, “I think the bait is mostly gone already, though. There weren't as many guests at the party last night.”

“Maybe you got them all.”

Her fingers carding slowly through his hair, making his scalp tingle. “I'll never get them all.”

You got me. He imagines himself as a trophy on her wall. A pet to parade out in front of other vampires, the one she left alive as a warning to the rest. He saw a special on the nature channel once, something about a – not a shark – a type of aquatic snapping turtle, how it singles out certain pretty fish and eats all the others. And no matter how many more fish show up, it will continue to eat just the new ones and leave the same old ones alive like decorations. Companions, maybe. But never safe.

It starts to rain again. He can feel the sun sinking behind the thick clouds, even though he can't see it, and he knows she'll get up soon, leave him here alone to go out and murder others like him if they dare to swim too close. He doesn't know how to get her to stay, what his soul would say to her to make her want to. He remembers loving her, just not how to do it, and it's not a loss he feels; it's a goddamn _freedom_. But the things he would say to anyone else he wanted, they don't feel like they're the things she needs to hear.

“Buffy,” he starts, “last night, the way you touched me...”

“We don't have to talk about it,” she says immediately. He can feel her muscles tense under his head.

“You didn't want to stop.”

A few seconds, and her fingers resume stroking his hair. “Not exactly breaking news,” she mutters.

“So why did you?”

Another tense, another pause. Then, “You know why.”

Right... that. As gently as he can force himself to, he asks her, “You really think it could be perfect like this?” He lets one hand come up, skims his fingers over the hole in his stomach. He can feel her watching. Feel her considering. For a second there, he thinks maybe she _does_ think it could be, and he wonders if... but no, no. That's stupid. It hurts too much. She's gotta know he couldn't really fuck her like this, not the way he wants to. Not the way he can tell she wants him to. But she's considering; that's something. Maybe he should appeal to her sympathy? He says – and he tries to sound like he feels sorry for himself, but not _too_ sorry for himself because after all he's supposed to be a champion here – “Everything hurts. After the last few days of pretty much constant pain, you're the only thing that has made me feel good.” Is she buying this? It's the truth. He'd give her sincere eyes now, but the angle's all wrong.

Her fingers through his hair again, and then a shift from the bed as she stands, and she lays his head back down on a pillow. “I should do a sweep,” she says. The sun is fully gone now.

He reaches for her hand, manages to take it before she can walk away. “They won't be out there,” he tells her. “Not tonight.” As if to punctuate his point, a peal of thunder booms nearby, tapering off into a crackle. The rain comes down harder. “Stay with me?”

Why won't she look at his face? Jesus Christ, the eyes are what sell the whole thing.

She's looking at his hand. Their hands together. Then she tries to walk away anyway, and he tugs her arm, doesn't let go. Not sure if that's going too far. She stops, turns toward him again. And this is when he finally has the chance to give her the Look, that longing, soulful expression he cultivated decades before he was cursed, the one he'd been working on before he was even turned. But when he sees her face, he hesitates.

“What's wrong?” he finds himself asking instead. Feels weird, like taking a step where your foot never hits the ground.

She tilts her head at him, just looking. “Nothing,” she says, and unexpectedly leans down to press a kiss to his forehead.

A flash of uncertainty – she's not holding a sword, is she? – but then she's walking away from the bed, having dropped his hand. Pauses somewhere near the door. He thinks she'll say something, but she doesn't. Just opens it, and the lightning outside brightens the whole place for a moment. Smell of rainwater and dirt, loud crackle of thunder, and she's gone.

Great.

Alone again, trapped, bored. A little freaked out that the slayer's mood bothered him. Either the shark's gonna eat you or it won't, not a lot of difference whether or not it seems depressed when it does.

The rain starts coming down like bullets on the roof. Hail, maybe, even though it's warm out. He can hear the wind howling through the spaces in between crashes of thunder. Cracking sway of old trees, shivering of leaves. A particularly loud boom vibrates the bed, and the lights zip out, digital clock on the nightstand goes blank, the regular buzz of appliances suddenly silenced. In the pitch dark that remains, there's only the sounds of angry weather, windows occasionally outlined in the flickering glow of lightning. He's thinking, there's no way a vampire is venturing out in this mess, no way anyone would attempt to face a slayer under these conditions. She's just out there getting wet so she doesn't have to be in here with me.

Would be a real shame if she got struck by lightning a whole bunch of times.

After a while, though, he can hear her. Near the window. Snatches of puns blown away on the wind. Thud of limbs hitting limbs, bodies blocking blows. Faint grunts lost in the rain. She's fighting something. Something actually came at her, tonight of all nights. He's slightly impressed by whatever it is. Wonders if it had a plan or simply attacked the only thing it stumbled across in this weather and got supremely unlucky. Lasting too long to be a vampire, must be some kind of demon. Another boom rattles the windowpanes. Somewhere nearby, a tree cracks with a sharp sound and drops a heavy branch to the ground.

The rain is too loud for him to hear exactly when the fight ends. He's still listening for it when the door swings open again and it feels like the storm itself has come inside, but then it closes and there's just the girl, drenched, water rolling off her to drip across the floor as she walks to a cabinet. Sound of crinkly plastic being opened. His eyes have adjusted to the deep darkness of the power outage well enough to see that when she approaches the bed, she's eating a Twinkie.

“What was out there?” he asks.

She swallows. Shrugs. Drops the half-eaten Twinkie on the bedside table. Pulls off her soaked shirt. Leans down and kisses his mouth.

He falls up into the kiss immediately, no more questions asked. This is it, what he wanted, what they both wanted, God he _knew_ she wanted it! She tastes sweet, and her hand on his face is warm, and there's water dripping from the tip of her ponytail onto his chest and he's almost laughing, her neck so close to his mouth. He puts his hand on it, just there, feels her wet pulse against his palm while they kiss. No, he thinks, I won't turn you. I want you just like this. Like _this_.

Hot. Willing. Alive but kissing death, kiss like taking a bite out of something.

It doesn't even feel like a new kiss. It feels like the continuation of one they'd started a long time ago, the second half of a kiss that's been going on already for years, one that has never stopped. She devours him, they devour each other, and at the same time she's yanking at the button on her wet jeans, tearing them down her legs in a frenzy, his hands on her body, on her neck, her breasts, pushing down the back of her panties until she rips those off too.

He's already hard, was ready for her the moment their lips touched in the dark. He groans into her mouth when she climbs over him, his injuries jostled around on the bed, but his pain doesn't stop her and he doesn't want it to. She rubs against him, skin so warm it almost burns, slick, her whole self damp all over with late summer rain, almost hard to keep his hands on her. She breaks the kiss to sit up, straddling him, finds his cock with her hand, and then slides down.

They're both breathing, panting, when she starts to ride, and God it's agony, so much better and so much worse than last night had been; he's close to tears from the revelation of it. The glide and grind, the slippery tight heat, his torn muscles screaming as he bucks up into her, fingers grasping hard onto her hips. Like this, fuck yeah, just like this, I wouldn't have you any other way.

It's too much, too intense, right from the beginning. Somewhere inside her is that lightness he's chasing, sparks of it already tripping down his cock as she squeezes him, swirling into the dark, heavy bloom of pain in his belly. How is it that such a feeling can exist? This storm of joy and suffering, this perfect mix of torture, delight, and passion. He can't get enough. Holding her small body to him, thrusting into her by sheer force of will. There can never be enough of this.

Not a shark, he thinks suddenly. Of course she’s not just a shark. She’s the entire goddamn ocean drowning him. She’s all the sharks inside it, and she’s the hurricane outside, too. She’s the thing that pushes him under and the thing that drags him up in her teeth all at once, and he was, God, so wrong about not being able to lose his soul this way. Of course it could happen like this. _Obviously_ like this. It's the simplest truth of his entire life.

So why is she letting it happen? How could she ever—?

And that's when it occurs to him that she knows.

Oh, fuck. She knows, she already knows. She _must_ know. Rocking her hips against him, that incredible hot slide inside. She knows. Those tiny gasps, hitches in her breath when she takes him in and in and in again and she knows, God, she's known this whole time. Hasn't she? Doesn't she know?

_You didn't want to stop. So why did you?_

_You know why._

Because he might lose his soul, or because he already has?

Never took him to her home. Never let anyone else come here. Never left him unguarded. _I stay here every night_.

His fingers pressing into her thighs, holding onto her, the way she moves above him. She's _got to_ know and there's something he can't stop seeing in his head, something she's doing to him. Something he thought about earlier that he can't forget, the thing about taming a shark, whether you could do it from inside the shark's mouth. Wondering if it can happen this way, wondering if teeth are always sharp, if they can be soft and hot instead and God so tight, wondering how many different ways a person can be held or dragged or bitten or rescued from drowning.

You know. You've fucking got me. You've had me all along.

But I could still hurt you. I could destroy you from the inside, as easily as you could destroy me. Wouldn’t I, Buffy? Wouldn’t I ruin you? Tell me I could.

Her hands on his aching body as she moves, small hands warm against his bruised skin. Fingers sliding up as she leans down, her hand finding his neck as her lips find his mouth again. Those hips still moving, thighs tensing as she takes him and takes him, and he's starting to understand something that he didn't before. Here, chasing something inside her, kissing her, he's starting to understand how this works between them, the reason it feels so unbearable both with his soul and without, and why, either way, it would always be perfect. It's because they're both drowning, and it's because they're both sharks. It's because what she really has is his heart between her teeth, the exact same place where he keeps hers.

It's the way they hold each other just like this, one moment from ruin, neither biting down.

And when he finally comes with her, deep inside the warmth of her body, it feels like being torn apart.

She cuffs him afterward. He doesn't even struggle. He's trying to look into her eyes, trying to see something there by the flickers that light up the windows, but she's not looking back so he just follows her with his eyes as she moves. One wrist and then the other, the chain already bolted to the floor beneath the headboard. As the second manacle clicks closed around him, he says to her, "I wasn't going to hurt you." The truth. Maybe.

And she says, "I know." She's not even angry.

But the way she says it, gentle, understanding even, that's what hurts, what makes his hands clench above the cuffs, makes him look away from her bitterly. I'll kill you, he thinks. One day this will be over. One of us will get free.

She says, "I just didn't want you going out in this weather."

He tugs at the chain, just a little. Not really testing it. Restless. He says quietly, "You think I can't handle a little storm?" Still making these useless fists, as if he could fight the rain coming down.

She reaches for his hand, bumps her fingers softly over his knuckles. He lets his fist relax, open up, and she fits her smaller hand against his hand, aligns their fingers. Looks at their hands together. They both look, and a long silent moment passes like this. Then she looks into his eyes, and there's a quick flash of it, the thing he was trying to see.

"It's a big storm,” she says.

*


End file.
